


Running Out of Time

by moonstone1520



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Major character death - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7251544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonstone1520/pseuds/moonstone1520
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Curiosity driving her, Molly unfurled herself from her sofa and trod over to her entryway. She opened her door and was immediately accosted by Sherlock. He wrapped his arms around her, kicked the door shut behind him, and crashed his lips to hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Another _Hamilton_ inspired fic, this one by "Non-Stop". It's not one of my best efforts, but I found a half written story in my docs and the rest just wrote itself. I'd say I'm sorry for the feels I'm about to induce... but then I'd be lying. Mwhahaha! ;)

No one was more surprised than Molly when she received the stream of texts at 11pm on a Tuesday evening.

_Molly. Are you home?_

_Please be home._

_Molly, please be home. Are you home?_

_If not, I’ll come straight to the morgue._

She had to triple check the name on the text readout to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

Yep, they were from Sherlock Holmes, alright.

She furrowed her brow as she texted him a reply.

_I’m home, Sherlock. Are you alright? What do you need?_

_You. I need you, Molly. Please, open your door._

Her eyes darted to her door.

_My door?_

_Yes. Open it. I’m outside._

Curiosity driving her, Molly unfurled herself from her sofa and trod over to her entryway. She opened her door and was immediately accosted by Sherlock. He wrapped his arms around her, kicked the door shut behind him, and crashed his lips to hers.

If Molly had been asked to describe the way Sherlock Holmes kissed at that moment, she’d have answered, _desperately_. For Sherlock Holmes indeed had Molly Hooper locked in a desperate embrace. Confusion turned to surprise turned to outright joy when he began unbuttoning the blouse she had yet to remove since she returned home from work. She pushed his coat off his shoulders, wincing internally a bit when the gorgeous garment hit her floor. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck as he began pulling and sucking at the skin there, eliciting delicious moans from Molly.

She ripped open his dress shirt, the buttons skittering across the floor—completely ruined. _Thank God he wasn’t wearing the purple one_ , Molly thought. The last coherent thought that crossed her mind for the remainder of the night, as it turned out, for as soon as her hands hit his chest, Sherlock tore his mouth from her neck and fixed her with a gaze that set her insides on fire. He brushed his fingers across her jaw, hooked his right hand behind her ear and pulled her to his mouth again while his other hand worked her trousers.

It took everything Molly had to guide him to her bedroom, where he made her pray to every god she could think of, and some she invented.

Thrice.

She awoke the next morning to a destroyed bed, a sore body, and Sherlock Holmes ready for round four.

 _Thank God I’m off today,_ she thought, as he pressed his lips to hers in a softer, gentler, but no less desperate, kiss.

He took his time with her, and once both had achieved the high that naturally occurs in these situations, Molly curled up into Sherlock’s side, both attempting to once again catch their breaths.

“Sherlock? Not that this wasn’t fun or anything, but what brought this on?”

He tensed up for a moment, then surprised her by covering her body with his. He kissed her sweetly and rested his forehead against hers.

“I realized that I love you, Molly.” He smiled at her surprised gasp. “And I didn’t want to waste any more time not being with you.” Her hand came up to cup his cheek, and he covered it with his own, shifting his weight onto his elbow.

“Sherlock, did something happen?” Molly wasn’t naïve. She felt his body tense again. “Something did happen, didn’t it?”

“Molly, all you need to know is that I love you. I have for quite a long time, but I always believed that being alone protects me; that I don’t have any use for love. I simply realized that I can’t live the rest of my life not chasing after what I want. And I want you. More than anything, Molly Hooper, I want you.” He kissed her with the desperation that had accompanied his initial ravishment of her and when Molly woke up again, she realized two things:

  1. That Sherlock Holmes had told her he loved her.
  2. That she hadn’t said it back.



***

The surprises kept coming when Sherlock continued to make love to her on a nightly basis, continued to declare his love for her, and began to show his affection for her around the others. It was all beginning to make Molly’s head spin. So when he came to her flat for the fifth night in a row, she stopped him before he could start.

“Sherlock, what is this all about? And don’t kiss me—” she warned, as he made an advance towards her, “—to put me off. I know something happened to make you realize that you feel… things. For me. But you need to tell me what happened. You’re beginning to scare me.”

He sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair. “Molly, why can’t you believe that I love you?”

Molly flinched. “You keep saying that, Sherlock. I want to believe you, but—”

“But?”

“But you haven’t shown it much in the years I’ve known you. If anything, you’ve put me off time and time again and this about face is a bit… well, it’s unnerving.” Molly realized that she might be destroying something she’d wanted for years, and her heart sped up in anticipation of Sherlock’s response. 

His shoulders slumped and he crossed to her, taking her in his arms.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you with my behavior. All of this came about when I was in hospital after… after my most recent overdose.” He felt her pull away from him violently and let her go, knowing he was deserving of her wrath.

“Overdose?” she bit out. “You were high again?”

He nodded. “I was about to be sent to my death in Eastern Europe. Courtesy of the British Government,” he snarled, the words dripping with venom. “I wanted to go out flying, as it were.” He watched the gears turn in her head as she slowly put it all together. He continued.

“I remember how you’ve helped me over the years when I had no reason to be deserving of your kindness. Of your affection. I remember how you saved my life when I was shot. In here,” he pointed to his head, smiling.

He sobered. “I remember when you dropped everything to kill me.” She met his eyes. Hers filled with tears as she saw his words reflected in his. “So, I think the bigger surprise, Molly Hooper, is that I didn’t realize that I loved you eons ago.” He reached for her again, and she let him take her into his arms. She let him hold her and she felt his heart pound beneath his chest. “I didn’t want to waste any more time,” he rumbled into her hair. He dropped a kiss onto her head and waited.

“I love you, too,” she whispered into his shirt.

“Hmm?”

Molly giggled. “I said, I love you too, you ridiculous, aggravating man. And yes, you did take far too long to realize you loved me.”

The expression on Sherlock’s face was one she’d remember for years to come.

***

“He’s off crime solving again,” Molly huffed to Mary. “It’s only a four! I told him to skive it off to Greg, but he’s insistent. You’d think he’s running out of time with the amount of cases he tries to stuff into a single day.”

“Yeah, but it makes him happy, Molls,” Mary replied, watching Molly as she twirled about in the mirror. “And it gets him out of our hair while we throw this wedding together.” Mary looked her up and down, her gaze appreciative. “I think this is the one.”

“You think?” Molly grinned. “I love it.” The satin tea length gown caressed Molly’s body as though it was made for her. The emerald on her engagement ring sparkled in the bright lights of the bridal shop as she brought it up to her face to admire it again. “I still can’t believe this is all happening,” she murmured.

“I know,” Mary grinned. “It only took the thick berk long enough to realize how he felt about you. I think it only took John six months to tell me he loved me!”

Molly turned to her friend, her expression troubled. “No, I mean, I still can’t _believe_ this is all happening. And so quickly, too. Only a month ago Sherlock told me he loved me and then gives me this ring last week and wants to be married in a fortnight. It’s odd, even for Sherlock.”

Mary’s brow furrowed as she thought about recent events. “It is strange,” she agreed. “Do you not want to marry him?”

“It’s not that,” Molly said quickly.

“Do you want to wait?”

Molly bit her lip. “I know Sherlock. I can read him. And there is something wrong, but he won’t tell me what it is. And I think that whatever is wrong is behind the urgency that is driving him so hard recently.”

Mary took her hands. “If you want to wait Molls, he can’t force you to marry him.”

She smiled. “No, of course he can’t.” She rested her hands over her flat belly. “But he also doesn’t know about this little bean yet, and I’d rather not have him marry me out of a sense of obligation. I’d rather he marry me because he desperately want to.”

Mary gasped. “Really?”

Molly nodded. “The doctor called last night while Sherlock was out. I’m about a month along.” She watched Mary do the calculations in her head and blushed when she turned a wolfish grin on Molly.

“Too excited to use rubbers?” she teased.

“It would appear so,” Molly giggled, her flush deepening. “He’s usually so astute with deductions about my body, but I think he’s missed this one. At least, I hope so. I want to be able to tell him and not have him know ahead of time.”

Mary hugged the petite woman in front of her. “He loves you, Molls. He’ll be over the moon about this.”

“I hope so,” she replied quietly, her doubts echoing in her eyes.

***

Sherlock and Molly were married in a simple ceremony a fortnight later and Sherlock was not only surprised, but over the moon with the news of Molly’s pregnancy, just as Mary predicted.

“I always miss something,” he murmured against his new wife’s belly, his eyes shining at the thought of a life he helped create growing inside the woman he loved. She grasped his hand and squeezed it.

“You always miss something,” she agreed with a smile.

***

Molly awoke to a phone call six months later. She reached across the bed for her husband, but only grasped cold sheets. As her sleep addled mind began to wake up, she reached for her mobile.

“Hello?” she asked, her voice deep with sleep.

“Molly.” John’s voice was flat and emotionless, which woke Molly right up. Her heart climbed into her mouth and she felt the baby turn over in her stomach.

“Oh God, it’s Sherlock, isn’t it?” she asked, her mouth dry. Dread settled upon her like a thundercloud.

A very long pause on the other end of the line.

“John?” she whispered, fear and panic beginning to overtake her.

“He’s dead.”

Molly’s world fell apart in a heartbeat.

***

“An aneurysm? How long did he know?”

Molly sat at the kitchen table at Baker Street, John on one side, Mary on her other, both holding her hand. Mycroft sat across from her, his eyes red, his normally impeccable suit wrinkled and messy.

“Since the last time he overdosed and was in hospital. They found it during a CAT scan,” he replied, his voice low and ragged. “A ticking time bomb in his head. There was nothing the doctors could have done. It was inevitable.”

Molly swallowed, her throat clicking. Tears ran down her face. She left them unchecked. “Did you know?”

“I can honestly say that my little brother kept me in the dark about this matter,” Mycroft replied brokenly. “He left the legal documents and notes for all of us in the family safe.” He slid the envelope with her note inside across the table to Molly.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” she whispered, her heart breaking more as the baby inside her kicked and moved.

“I don’t know,” Mycroft whispered, the tears beginning to fall.

***

_Molly,_

_If you’re reading this, Mycroft will have given this to you, which could only mean that the time bomb in my head finally went off. I can only hope that I will be around when our daughter is born, but in the event that I am not, please let her know that her father loved her so very much._

_Molly, this letter is the hardest thing I will ever have to do. It was beyond cowardly, but I couldn’t tell you about my condition. I wanted to live my life to the fullest extent possible and, had anyone known, my caseload would have been extremely limited out of concern for my wellbeing, however misguided. You would have attributed all of my actions to the whims of a dying man, and I did not want you to think of me that way. True, the results of the CAT scan made me realize how utterly blind I was to my feelings for you, but please believe that those feelings were ALWAYS there. I did love you and I love you more and more with every day that I’m able to spend with you. I could never have gone to my grave without telling you how I felt about you and spending every possible moment with you that I had left._

_Ecstatic doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about becoming a father, nor how I feel about you as her mother. Our daughter will be brilliant—she has to be, she has us as parents._

_I know you are angry with me and I can’t fault you for that. But this was my choice. No medical intervention known to man could have fixed what was happening in my brain, so I decided to use what little time I had left to make you happy. And making you happy has made me happy. Indeed Molly, marrying me and growing my child has made me the happiest I have ever been in my life. Thank you for loving me._

_All my love,_

_Sherlock_

***

“Daddy was very selfish, wasn’t he Mummy?” Sarah Victoria Holmes asked as she stared at the onyx headstone of a man she would never know. Her mother squeezed her hand in admonishment and sighed.

“Yes, yes he was. But he was also brilliant and clever and loved you very, very much,” Molly replied, her eyes glistening in the sunlight. Sarah looked up at her mother.

“And he loved you too, didn’t he?”

Molly smiled and looked down at her daughter, taking in her dark curly locks and blue-green eyes that could only have come from a Holmes.

_“So, I think the bigger surprise, Molly Hooper, is that I didn’t realize that I loved you eons ago_

_“I didn’t want to waste any more time.”_

“Yes, sweetheart. He loved me very much. So much, he finally stopped wasting time.”


End file.
